Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
by Othalla
Summary: Don't build from memories Stephen will tell Dominic will tell Ariadne. Before, there was someone who did. It didn't end well. (Inception Origin story, Mal's family)


The concept of dreaming – dreaming, not what you do in your sleep – is not something that the military came up with all by themselves. They picked up on it quickly, sure. Built on it like people do cities, adding and subtracting and changing the substance altogether. Making it more – though really, less – than what it had been before. Stephen Miles – and Dominic Cobb, because there was a time when the two were never ever to be parted – is the creator that the American military trusted with the task and with the secrets of the world down under – though really, it's not like they could have chosen anyone else. They try not to think of it.

He's the Father of Dreams.

But he is an Architect, when one delves into his head and work out how the cogs twist and turn. A man trapped within the confines of logic, of reason. Of the laws a human being can never forget if they don't learn to live in pretend.

 _Come back to reality, Cobb._

Stephen Miles is not a Dreamer. That is a truth.

There was one, though – back at the before of a beginning – who was.

* * *

Michel meets Mallorie at the entrance to the library where she spends her afternoons. His arms are full with books and hers are wrapped around her middle, because it is a cold winter this year and her coat is flimsy thin. Neither of them looks up before they crash in a pile of limbs and hard edges, books and elbows and a pair of metal frame glasses, onto the white ground.

Michel scrambles up and away immediately, apologizing fervently while trying to collect his books before they become soggy all the way through. Mallorie laughs in response, to the situation and words both, and spreads her arms and legs wide before drawing them back to her sides.

Repeats.

There is an angel in the snow when she gets up, and she smiles proudly at the uneven wings and the extra hand planted just by the head. Then she says hello and goodbye all in one sentence, and walks inside.

She doesn't bother to wipe her coat. Michel's fingers itch with the need to do it for her.

The first meeting sets the tone.

* * *

He brings flower the next day, because he remembers seeing her at the library before and thinks that maybe, he'll be in luck.

He is.

* * *

"How many times can a person fall before it kills them?"

She is smiling because whenever is she not. They're sitting together on the roof of the building he lives in, their feet dangling over the edge, and the wind catching their hair.

The sun is shining, midday and no clouds, and she's the most beautiful person that Michel has ever seen.

"That depends," he says, "on from what height they'd be falling. I'd think."

"And from where," she adds. Guile and mischievous. Pleased. "I could fall from the top of the world thousands of times and never die if I was sleeping. If I was dreaming."

She shuffles further out – toward the sky and the gap between houses, toward fall and edge and down– and he catches her hand in his. He keeps her tethered so she won't slip away by a breeze. He considers harnessing her to his side so as to never lose her, as he knows he someday will.

She's still smiling, even though it's taken another tone. Distant. Lacking.

"But if I would fall from here – from this height and this where – I'd never wake up."

She laughs and kisses him on the cheek. Gets up and doesn't brush away the dust.

"I really do prefer dreaming."

* * *

They get married in the winter. The church is cold and the celebrators keep their outerwear on. Mallorie has a coat this time as well – still too thin, never can be anything but – and Michel rubs her arms as he kisses her for the first time again. Hugs her to his chest and breathes her in.

There is a woman singing, but the words are different in his head – they'll come in a few years' time.

He smiles because Mallorie _Vaucaire_.

She's his wife.

He's married.

* * *

"What are you working on?" she asks. She's splayed out on the couch in his home office, hands making shadow figures on the wall. The sun is setting and streams right in through the twice glassed window.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up higher, and closing his eyes. "Sedatives," he says. "Something more manageable."

"Ah," she says, and that's that.

* * *

She's always disappointed when she wakes up. It doesn't matter if it's from a dream or a nightmare.

He doesn't get it. Michel remembers few of his dreams, and the ones that he does remember are depressingly boring. He remembers going shopping for vegetables with his mother, or having a suit fitted, or grammar checking. One memorable time of he'd watched paint dry for seemingly hours.

Not the most exciting of things for dreams.

But Mallorie makes wonders in her mind, he knows. She tells him every morning, as she writes them down in her journal. Of colours so vivid they hurt your eyes. Of buildings that reach beyond the limits of the sky. Of animals and plants out of this world.

Impossible things, that can never exist when one is awake.

Things he wants to see.

* * *

Marie comes about a month before he finishes the prototype.

She screams even in her sleep.

* * *

"Last night I built a stairway with four corners and no end." She rocks slightly back and forward as she holds Marie to her breast, right hand rubbing soft hair and left hand on diaper clad bottom. "Walked it for hours. It was wonderful."

It's an obsession, he knows. Even though he pretends that he doesn't.

He wakes up that night to Marie's screaming – the night is his responsibility – but he doesn't go back to bed after he's managed to soothe her. He goes to his office.

* * *

Theirs's is a family of obsessions.

* * *

She is a dreamer.

He is a chemist.

History is made in liquid.

* * *

The first time he tries to go under – for the rule of the mad is to test on yourself – he spends infinity in nothing and wakes up nauseous. He scrambles out of the chair and throws up on the plush red carpet of his office. He stays there, bile burning in his nose and throat. His bones shiver. His muscles don't work.

When he looks himself in a mirror he marvels at skin without wrinkles and hair not grey, at bones not fragile and eyes still seeing. The clothes on his back are ones he remembers, like something he should know but doesn't by sight, but feels like home through smell.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.

He's not as dead as he thinks he is.

* * *

You can die thousands of times and still wake up if you do it from the right where.

She told him so, remember?

* * *

Second through ten goes much the same and two weeks turn to forever.

He hasn't told Mallorie that he's at testing stage, but she knows anyhow. Stares into his eyes and sees herself unleashed and smiles through her cheeks.

She hugs him more, he's noticed. He tries not to resent her for it. He tries even harder when there is a glass of water ready by the table next to the chair he uses for impossible things.

He's not the same man he was before. He's changed more during the last week than all the years beforehand together. He marvels at his skin every time he wakes up.

He pours in the drug and swallows it right up.

At this point a few forevers more don't really count.

* * *

It takes him years – don't think about what that means, don'tdon't _don_ _'_ _t_ – before something changes and he figures step one out.

The floor falls out from under him as he rips the needle out.

* * *

"I made the sky green and the ocean yellow," she says and strokes his hair.

He hums in agreement. He kisses her cheek.

"Soon I'll get to see," he whispers and smiles into her ear.

Marie screams in their arms.

* * *

The place before he got to the needles isn't something that Michel talks about.

The needles brought instability to the dreams. Basic rules. People.

Before that just _wasn't_.

* * *

Here's the thing that shapes worlds long after Michel dies forever:

He is not a Dreamer.

Mallorie can make wonders in her mind out of nothing. She can change the fundamental and normalize the impossible. She can make a dream more. She'd love Limbo, because if she's there not even her own subconscious could derail her.

For Michel, Limbo is the most stable state there is. He can't alter a thing. He just grows old within and then dies from age, because he can make nothing kill him faster. When he dreams before needles he spends infinity in the unchangeable and he'd never have returned – reality is for the sane and abandon it on your own risk – if not for one thing.

There is a moment, just a flash of a second before everything goes static and he falls, where the world crumbles to pieces around him. Another where before the infinite there at the bottom.

The Dream is collapsing.

But what if it isn't?

* * *

The first level is his childhood home. It is blue mats in the kitchen and a chipped table in the living room. It is yellow candles and trains made of wood. Mother and father and sweet little rabbit.

It's memories.

He wakes up after three hours – fifteen minutes – and doesn't have to look into the mirror.

* * *

The first level is Stockholm in the winter. Slippery streets and cold wind blowing through the city. Wooden houses with red paint and sparkling windows. Potatoes and carrots and red meat on his tongue.

It's memories.

He wakes up after five hours – twenty-five minutes – and still shivers.

* * *

The first level is the library where they met. Ancient books and dusty corners hidden everywhere. Lamps with bronze plating and rooms open all the way to the roof. Librarians and comfortable silence and unforgettable meetings.

It's memories.

He wakes up after one hour – five minutes – and feels the snow still on his hand.

* * *

The first level is their home. His office. His daughter. Mallorie.

It's life.

He wakes up after a day – two hours – and doesn't really notice.

* * *

MallorieMallorie _Mallorie_.

* * *

Michel prepares two needles and everything changes.

The terms aren't quite coined yet, but things still work the same.

There is a dreamer.

There is a subject.

She laughs full bellied from the top of the world and makes water into wine and lets it down like rain and there are sharks flying through the air and trees growing the height of gods with trunks of metal and cities are born and gone with the blink of an eye and it is magical.

Mallorie dies from a sword in her stomach, but she doesn't stop laughing even when they wake up.

"Again!" she screams, clutching him to her chest and making everything worth it. "Let's go again!"

* * *

It's a drug.

He knows that.

He just doesn't care.

* * *

There is no such thing as a kick yet because Michel never considers it. He's died to wake up every single time since he began this thing, and death is forever associated with waking up. A gunshot to the head. A mob running you down. A forest fire burning you to cinders.

A sword to the stomach.

The people in his mind don't very much like anyone messing with their world, and there is nothing Mallorie likes doing more. They die and wake up so many times a night that even the hurt they feel is disregarded.

Everything can be desensitized.

* * *

When Marie is six she breaks both of her wrists when she falls down the stairs. She'd been standing at the very top when she got distracted, and fell all the way down to the bottom.

She screams in pain and there is blood on her dress and a gash on her forehead.

Michel and Mallorie are in the office, though, because it is night, and night is the time for dreams and wonders. They're asleep. They don't notice a thing.

Of course, this time is the one that Mallorie somewhat behaves and they avoid getting killed. Of course it is.

* * *

Thirty minutes is nothing.

Thirty minutes is everything.

* * *

There is blood all over the carpet.

They have to rip it out.

"I'm not saying never, Mallorie. I'm saying not tonight." He pushes his hand through his hair – too long and early grey – and can't help the irritation that wells up in him when she stomps her feet in the ground and keeps glaring.

An hour now, they've been at it.

Her nostrils flare. "Then when, Michel? When? You've said 'not tonight' for a week now."

Michel digs his fingers into his arms, dents his skin and tries to ground himself in the now. "Our daughter fell down the stairs when we were dreaming. She could have died. Don't you get that? Is that not important to you?"

She waves her hand dismissively, says, "Of course it is," and they both know she doesn't really mean it.

* * *

He wakes up the next morning with her side of the bed cold and empty, and he knows it in his bones, long before he's made his way to his office and finds her out in his chair, the glass on the floor in pieces, telling a story a body in a chair isn't able.

* * *

Nineteen sixty and her song on the radio. The words make sense.

No regrets.

* * *

The sad thing is, the _fun_ thing is, she doesn't wake up. Michel did, each and every single time, but he knows that Mallorie just won't. Because in Limbo, she is God and Gods don't die.

He calls the hospital, and says, "My wife, she won't wake up, please help me," and hopes against everything that they can.

"Mr Vaucaire, it's been months now. We can't afford the space."

Pull the plug.

* * *

The casket feels empty even though he can see it isn't.

He left her behind long ago.

Countless times.

* * *

Marie doesn't cry at the funeral, and she doesn't say anything either. She did a lot of both, when her mother fell asleep, but now that her body is gone along with her mind, she just doesn't.

Michel doesn't know what to do. He feeds her and teaches her and hugs her close before kissing her forehead goodnight and tucking her in. He clings to her tight and she hangs limp in his arms.

Maybe he doesn't handle it all that well.

* * *

Mallorie is so beautiful when she laughs.

* * *

At least he uses the needles and the machine he had made, to even out the process.

At least there is that.

* * *

He thinks she's _happy_.

* * *

Don't build from memories Stephen will tell Dominic will tell Ariadne.

Before, there was someone who did.

It didn't end well.

* * *

When he sleeps, he always dreams. Of a place just like this where Mallorie didn't die and Marie still speaks, where the weather is just as dreary and the wind blows just as harsh, and the only difference is that he's not alone and the greying of his hair isn't quite as telling.

But then he wakes up, and it's over, and he maybe goes a bit crazy.

They all do.

At least he notices.

* * *

He stares at the knives when he's awake. Tries not to imagine feeling them aching through his skin.

Fails.

* * *

Marie grows older. It's what happens with children when you look away – and all he does is look away – they reach for the sky and don't look back. She gets a boyfriend and then a fiancé and then she gets married.

He's a fine chap, that Stephen.

He's going to do something with his life.

* * *

His house is not a home anymore.

* * *

But in it, he _dreams_.

* * *

He walks into the foyer of the hospital in a daze. Doctors and nurse rush by him, hurrying around with patients and charts and stethoscopes, all dressed in pastels and without faces. He's standing straight and wearing good clothes. He shaved this morning. They don't notice him.

It's ok.

He's not really there.

It's good the floor isn't carpet. He's dripping blood on it.

* * *

Marie names her daughter after her mother.

There's a reason for everything.

* * *

Stephen finds it in the safe, two days after he dies.

The top spins, endless.

* * *

Before the beginning there was a dreamer who lived with her head in the clouds and never woke up.

She was the catalyst.

Nothing more.

* * *

Here's what they should tell you but never do:

It _never_ ends well.

* * *

 _AN: So, this has been in my folder since basically the beginning of time. I've cleaned it up some, bc it had hella many grammar errors, but eh I can't be bothered doing somthing more with it._


End file.
